MER Bookshelf – March 2026
Date: March 19, 2026
In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and […]
News & Reviews
News:
Molly McCloy talks about her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES, on KJZZ Phoenix!
Date: March 17, 2026
Tucson storyteller Molly McCloy loves telling stories about hard things. She’s done it on stage and in print. Her memoir, “Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on […]
Maurya Simon interviewed by Sean Singer on his Substack, The Sharpener!
Date: March 17, 2026
Maurya Simon’s The Blue Bridge, her twelfth volume of poems, will appear in 2026 (Etruscan Press). Her earlier volume, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, received the 2019 Independent Booksellers […]
Amy Pence discusses her upcoming novel YELLOW in an interview with ArtsATL!
Date: March 12, 2026
During Hurricane Irma in 2017, a 90-foot oak tree split and fell into the middle of Amy Pence’s cottage in the old fishing village of Pine Lake, Georgia. A beam […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK featured in Our Culture Magazine’s list of most anticipated books of spring 2026
Date: March 11, 2026
It’s finally warming up here in Washington, DC, and earlier this month was the first instance I was able to comfortably sit on our roof and read. With a coffee […]
April Ossmann interviewed on the Derate the Hate podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
April Ossmann discusses poetry collection, WE with Derate the Hate podcast.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed on Bookstr!
Date: March 3, 2026
Yellow is a slow-bloom speculative novel and quietly cosmic. It’s a book about how long childhood wonders and wounds can linger, how the universe keeps whispering even when we stop […]
Molly McCloy interviewed on The ARTWIFE Podcast!
Date: March 3, 2026
Molly McCloy discusses her upcoming memoir, NINE GRUDGES: THE SPITEFUL ORIGINS OF THE HAPPIEST DYKE ON EARTH with Hannah Harlee.
Amy Pence’s YELLOW listed in Deep South Magazine!
Date: March 3, 2026
It’s 1973: summer of the Watergate hearings and Skylab’s launch into space when 12-year-old Z discovers an unclassified slime mold growing in her Louisiana backyard. Something compels her deep coherence […]
Luke Goebel’s KILL DICK listed in the New York Post!
Date: February 24, 2026
This satirical literary thriller has shades of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. A 19-year-old NYU dropout returns home to Brentwood to laze about and enjoy popping prescription pills. But […]
Reviews:
E.P. Tuazon’s A PROFESSIONAL LOLA on Kirkus Reviews
Date: March 12, 2024
Brightly evocative, clever, and sincere, Tuazon’s third work of fiction continues to chart a promising path forward. Click here to read more.
Booklist features review of Helen Benedict’s THE GOOD DEED!
Date: March 6, 2024
Benedict’s true-to-life novel resonates, particularly in the characters’ moments of fortitude in the face of brutal experiences of heartbreak and loss.
MAINCREST MEDIA Book Review of MacLeish Sq.
Date: February 29, 2024
MacLeish Sq. is a haunting and lyrical novel that blurs the boundaries between reality and illusion, present and past; Dennis Must explores the power of memory, guilt, and redemption in […]
Library Journal features review of Francesca Bell’s poetry collection, WHAT SMALL SOUND!
Date: February 28, 2024
Following 2019’s multi-award finalist Bright Stain, poet/translator Bell returns with a second collection focusing largely on women and the issues they face (many poems deal with abortion and rape), while […]
RHINO Magazine features review of Max Sessner’s WHOEVER DROWNED HERE, translated by Francesca Bell!
Date: February 28, 2024
Once upon a time many years ago I taught in Germany, not far from the Harz Mountains, haunt of the Brothers Grimm and Heinrich Heine. To my surprise my students […]
Bookworm for Kids blog recommends TREE SPIRITS (2nd Edition) by Louise Wannier!
Date: February 21, 2024
Today’s read… Tree Spirits by Louise Wannier Today’s read heads into the direction of creativity and imagination. It was presented to me as an unique, nonfiction read…and I’m expecting it […]
MomReadIt blog recommends Louise Wannier’s TREE SPIRITS (2nd Edition) as a “STEM Books to Explore”!
Date: February 21, 2024
I’m back with some new books to explore fun STEM concepts. I really miss having a Discovery Club at my library… maybe I’ll use these as a way to gauge […]
Publishers Weekly features review of Helen Benedict’s THE GOOD DEED!
Date: February 14, 2024
Benedict revisits the terrain of her nonfiction account Map of Hope and Sorrow (with Eyad Awwadawnan) for a complex and heartbreaking story of Syrians living at a refugee camp on the Greek […]
Dear Edna Sloane on Kirkus Review
Date: February 6, 2024
A restless millennial editor seeks connection with a former literary starlet in this epistolary novel. Read more here.
Katie Lawrence describes that Cheri Johnson’s ANNIKA ROSE both “disturbs and absorbs” in her review for the Library Journal!
Date: January 31, 2024
“Full of eerie atmospheric writing and many unanswered questions, poet Johnson’s fiction debut both disturbs and absorbs. Annika Rose is 17 and living in the middle of nowhere in northern […]